We use ordinary HTML forms, which opens up new possibilities for custom
interfaces with Java and JavaScript, too. For example, I've just finished
a first cut at a new JavaScript interface to our engine. It's here:
http://www.verity.com/demo/javascript/v3/frames.htm
IMPORTANT -- this is only tested with Netscape Navigator Atlas PR2 (the
latest beta pre-release of Netscape 3.0). However, early reports indicate
that it works with Navigator Gold 2.x. However, there are errors with Nav
2.x, which I'll try to clean up soon... but no guarantees. I'm
co-authoring an O'Reilly book on JavaScript and this is one of our
examples, so our target is Nav 3.0.
This example also uses JavaScript to format the search results, although
that can be done by the server, of course. This part of it uses a Perl
script on the server (to format the results into a simple script) but
expect open standards that would allow JavaScript-based search results to
be interoperable.
The off-the-self product formats HTML results using template files, though
it's easy to intercept them with Perl or whatever, of course.
Nick